


You Take My Breath Away

by Whuffie



Series: Cozy Autumn Prompts [6]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, Sensuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27118288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whuffie/pseuds/Whuffie
Summary: Time Period: After Inquisition / before TresspasserContent: Canon friendly AU. Warden found the cure and went to Skyhold. After meeting Cassandra, sparks flew and he romanced her. All other content follows the game storyline. Cassandra doesn’t become Divine. In this drabble they share a quiet, romantic moment.Note: Romantic fluff drabble
Relationships: Cassandra Pentaghast/Warden
Series: Cozy Autumn Prompts [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1975045
Kudos: 2





	You Take My Breath Away

Nothing deterred the single minded focus Cassandra leveled on an offending practice dummy. Silently, it awaited its fate. She whirled with a warrior’s grace and her blade came down with a satisfying thunk in the Autumn afternoon. With an expert tug, the sword came free in a shower of splinters.

Reginald lounged with his shoulder resting against a stone wall, green eyes alight with mischief and admiration.

“You watch me very intently, my lord,” Cassandra commented aridly.

Reginald’s grin stretched like a cat poised over a forbidden dish of cream. “That is because I quite enjoy watching you. It is not often I am graced with the sight of such a beautiful and formidable a woman.”

A familiar disgusted sound didn’t completely cover her tiny, pleased smile. Her eyes flicked his direction. “Beautiful am I? I’ve been called many things, but seldom that.” Briskly, she spun in a series of practice jabs, landing each on the dummy.

Reginald’s delightful charms once wooed any number of prospective bed partners from kitchen maid to noblewoman. He deployed them a great many times to earn delights untold through his life, alongside more than a few sticky situations. In his sixteenth year he nearly lost his best armor and went streaking naked as a greased nug from the wrong lady’s bedchambers. She had insisted she was unattached and available. Her husband disagreed. The jealous, disagreeable man would have pinned Reginald’s pale hide to a wall had he been more spry. Thus began a career of mayhem and lessons he never forgot. One must never, under any circumstance, get caught.

He seldom did, until Cassandra captured him in a way which left nowhere to run, no tricks to aide him, and no will to try. For all his hedonistic pursuits, he never fell in love until his path crossed the warrior woman with two dozen names and a stubborn streak to match a bronto. She always insisted in her matter-of-fact manner that she was no beauty. He would never be swayed into believing it. Her toned body was muscular, fit, and strong. She scoffed when he gave her such compliments, aware of her scars and absence of the soft voluptuousness popular among noble ladies. He saw only a woman victorious over enemies and beautiful curves that leant to strength rather than assets pushed up by a corset. Cassandra’s body was svelte as a lioness. One of his favorite parts of physically showing his admiration was to touch, caress, and kiss every inch of his intoxicating warrior lover.

If only he could badger her into marrying him, life would be complete. Thus far she was resistant to his proposals, but it didn’t stop him from trying. Like the rogue he was, he lay in wait and sprung it on her now and again when she was on unrelated topics. The tactic worked to break through her walls and confess how she wanted to be wooed. He was confident it would eventually wear her down to binding him to her for life in the eyes of the Maker.

As a man in love who had eyes for no other woman, he could be quite dogged.

Usually glib and clever, he was abashed to realize she was looking at him, sword relaxed at her side, waiting for him to speak. He had been lost in the sight of her and filled with quiet longing of many kinds. “Beautiful,” he argued with his taunting grin. “Strong, capable, and gorgeous.”

“Now you go too far,” she snorted. “Perhaps you would care to join me?” The tip of her sword waved toward the sparring ring.

“I could,” he agreed. She was an inch taller than he was and his equal in strength. Her training made her one of the best, but he was a Grey Warden. His lithe grace and speed matched her power and precision. They were an equal match on the training field, but he stepped closer to her in one of the startling quick moves of his class. “In our quarters, perhaps?” It wasn’t what she meant and he knew it, but he enjoyed teasing her. “It so happens I brought you a gift in my travels today.”

“A gift is it?” She sheathed her sword blandly at the hip with practiced confidence and pointedly looked at the book sized bulge in his hip satchel. Apparently she was in the indulgent mood he brought out in her. “What might that be?” 

“That,” he pretended to be grave as he looped his arms around her hips and leaned in to kiss her, “would be telling.”

Their lips met, and if anyone might have thought that Cassandra Allegra Portia Calogera Filomena Pentaghast was a disinterested or aloof lover, they were sorely mistaken. She was as passionate in kissing as she was in battle or the bedroom. He met her fervor with a lusty caress of lips, dancing teases with the tip of his tongue, and drawing nearly as much pleasure from it as more intense attention shared only in private. “We could go practice, but really, Dear One, where is the fun in that just now?” A flash of smug chiding lifted the corners of his lips and neat goatee.

“You are a terrible distraction.” Another kiss lingered pleasantly between them before she plucked a stray leaf from his auburn hair. Because of the season the foliage was nearly the same color. Yielding to a rare, open smile she relented. “Very well.”

Both of them were well armored, but he put an arm around her waist no differently than if they were sweeping through the halls of a castle dressed in silks. “How are things with the Inquisition now that a mage has become Divine?”

They spoke of the state of politics for a brief moment, and Cassandra’s concern for the Mark which was beginning to trouble the Inquisitor. When they crossed the threshold of their quarters, the conversation was shelved for another time. The simple living space was their sanctuary away from the burdens and trials of the outside world.

The fire burned low but the coals were still active and glowing. Reginald found the temperature pleasant to both of them, but wanted to avoid future distraction. He tossed some logs on it and gave it a gentle prod with a poker to stir the flames to life then removed his boots.

He and Cassandra knew one another in every intimate detail for long enough that she wasn’t startled at his silent tread circling around her. Laying his lips on her jaw, he made easy work of her armor buckles.

Although born in luxury at Highever, the Blight honed him into an adept thief with quick, light hands. The sense of mischief saturating his soul prompted the same hands to unerringly find certain places on her anatomy he which he knew savored sensual attention once divested of metal and leather. Most of the exploration was through cloth or padding, but he had his ways of sneaking fingers in to brush skin from time to time.

As part of the game, she always returned the favor, and after he lavished some playful, physical affection on her, she unfastened his Warden armor. Once it was hung up side by side on their armor racks, he withdrew her gift. Sprawling on his side of the bed, he held it up so she could inspect the cover. _You Take My Breath Away_. “I should say that you certainly do that for me. More importantly,” he flipped it over to inspect the back, “it is ranked six out of six fluttering scarves. It is not one of Varric’s, but I believe it might catch your interest.”

“You are incorrigible, but it is very thoughtful. Thank you.” She made to take it, but he pulled it out of reach.

“Oh no,” he insisted as she joined him. He molded his body against her from behind, laying the arm with the book across her ribs. “This is meant to be read together.” He kissed the outside corner of her lips before they rearranged pillows to get comfortable. “Perhaps,” he whispered in her ear, lightly kissing it, “even acted upon if we get to some particularly intriguing scenes. Until then,” he flipped to the first page, “let us see what harrows lay in store for this particular heroine. No doubt there will also be a lover. Although,” he added with a mock seriousness, “never so dashing as me.”

“Or as modest,” Cassandra parried with warm indulgence, stroking his arm and obviously appreciative how he continued to romance her with the same ardor as if they were freshly courting.

“Perhaps.” He didn’t argue, but began to read with the beat and flare of a poet – if a poet would have paused in his narrative to passionately kiss his audience or ended unclothed and tangled together at the midpoint of the book to invent their own chapters.


End file.
